DS Dan Stack On A Climate Change with Matt Matern

“Despite some of the talk about data centers load-following with clean electrons, the reality is they want to run all the time. They spend a lot of money on these sites and see the greatest value running 24-7. So they haven't lent themselves to being flexible assets. Gas turbines are way backordered now, so folks are looking for alternatives.”

A Climate Change with Matt Matern · Climate & Energy · November 2026

Context

Asked whether thermal batteries could make data centers greener and less of a drain on communities, the CEO of a brick-battery startup says data centers won't flex their demand. He proposes soaking up surplus solar for nearby industry instead, or feeding stored heat back to a data center via a turbine.

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Transcript

A Climate Change with Matt Matern Around 25:10 into the episode

Dan Stack

…has so much excess generation. And this is all happening, by the way, even with the rise of data centers and what have you, where really the flexibility of our asset allows us to synergize with those growing loads on the data center side. So it's, yeah, it's not a small market at all. It's massive.

Matt Matern

So do you see yourself or your company being able to facilitate a cleaner, greener data center center so that it would be less of a drain on local communities?

Dan Stack

Yeah, we see a couple opportunities there. The interplay between the thermal batteries and the data centers has a couple of interesting plays here. Number one, despite Some of the talk about data centers kind of load following with the clean electrons. The reality is they want to run all the time. They spend a lot of money on these sites. They see the greatest value by running 24-7. So they haven't really lent themselves to being flexible assets. So when you have thermal batteries nearby, what you usually have, or just in the grid itself, you'll have a build out of more power assets. There's a lot of talk on nuclear with data centers. There's a lot of solar and wind build out. Gas turbines, of course, are way backordered now. So folks are looking for alternatives. When you put thermal batteries in the mix, you can have the surplus power being generated by the large solar farms being built and take that surplus that the data center can't even use at that time and give it to the local or on the grid at all industry. So you can help make the most value out of those new electricity assets that are coming online for this…

Matt Matern

Well, it's definitely a leap forward and appreciate the great work that you're doing over there at Electrified Thermal Solutions. And everybody should check you guys out and pass the word along to local industry to tap into this power source that is cleaner and greener. So thank you again for being…

Dan Stack

Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it.

Matt Matern

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